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July 31, 2014

There’s an image
floating around on the internet that shows Final
Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts mainstay
Tetsuya Nomura’s take on Batman.
Apparently it was his design for a game that never materialized, but in
exchange there’s a
figure of him and some art if you’re interested in looking. Speaking personally, I don’t think it’s that
bad. It’s definitely an interesting
take, if a little cluttered. And given
the man responsible, it could have been a lot worse. A LOT worse.

Nomura may be famous
for running Kingdom Hearts right
into the damn ground his artistic sensibilities, but whether you like his
techniques or hate them, it’s hard to heap too much hate on him. If nothing else, his designs -- when they’re
at their best -- are the sort of things that by nature stick out in your
mind. They transcend being mere drawings
or renderings, and become some truly iconic stuff. I’d like to think that (if not for the
presence of something like Berserk)
it would be Cloud and his Buster Sword that engraved the concept of “massive
sword” in the public conscious, where it’s stayed for years. On the other hand, Nomura has almost
single-handedly ruined “belts and zippers” for everyone, so there’s also that.

July 24, 2014

The first thing I
noticed about Dawn of the Planet of the
Apes is that its opening sequence is eerily identical to the opening
sequence of The Last of Us.

If you know how I feel
about that game,
then you know that it didn’t exactly get me hyped for the hours to come. I mean, it’s like I was playing through it
all over again. Reports and news
broadcasts over mostly-black graphics; talk of a spreading
disease/virus/world-ending thingamajig; the info growing progressively direr as
time goes on; the last broadcast effectively signaling the end of the world;
it’s all there. I pretty much went “Oh,
great. It’s one of these stories.” It wasn’t,
thankfully, but the fear was still there at the outset.

In all honesty, it
feels like a lot of the time I get too ahead of myself. Like, I’m pretty sure there have been posts
where I’ve said that certain models -- certain storytelling conceits and
frameworks -- are “broken”, and need to take at least a break from the public consciousness. Even then, I’m certain that my…distaste for “gritty” stories is
well-documented. So once again, let me
make one thing clear: I don’t hate dark or gritty stories because they’re
dark. I hate them (and not even all of
them) if/when they betray their central premises and quality just to give the
people what they think they want. And
speaking in terms of stuff like The Last
of Us and AMC’s The Walking Dead,
the post-apocalypse is something that needs a lot more work and attention than
it’s gotten…yet those two “bastions” haven’t delivered. At least to me.

But this latest Apes movie has. And now I’ll show you why.

As you can guess, there are going to be plenty
of spoilers for Dawn, The Walking Dead,
The Last of Us, and probably more.
So get ready for that hotness.

Also, as a side note: I tried the Destiny beta. You can PROBABLY guess how I feel about
that. Post incoming (maybe), but in the
meantime? Just watch this and
substitute “Transformers” with “Destiny”, “Michael Bay” with “Activision”, and
“robots” with “guns”. Well, just to
start.

July 21, 2014

Well, maybe not
something as binary as “smart” and “stupid”, but you can’t beat that
attention-grabbing terminology.

Coming off of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (dat
title), I’ve been thinking a lot about the movie and its particulars. I didn’t expect it to be that good, but much
like last year’s Pacific Rim, I was
pleasantly surprised. Of course I’d
prefer not to speak for anyone else, but if you need a recommendation for Dawn, you’ve got it. In a cultural climate where there have been
four Transformers movies, it’s good
to see that there are still films -- even summer films -- that put in the
effort and absolutely kill it in
execution.

But now that the
movie’s taken a place inside my unreasonably-large head, I can’t help but
consider it in light of other movies, video games, and stories in general. Dawn may
be a movie that has apes with machine guns (it’s as stupid as it sounds), but
it’s an intelligent movie with the skill to put forth and examine its
themes. It’s a smart movie, all things
considered. Inherently smart,
gunner-monkeys aside. Even so, it
doesn’t take away from any other high-quality stories out there. Pacific
Rim is inherently stupid, but it’s also
got some juice to it. It’s got high
execution as well, and brains to go along with the metaphorical brawn.

So you know what that
means. I think it’s about time we try
and sort this thing out.

July 17, 2014

There’s an episode of The Simpsons where Homer takes a break
from helping Moe with insurance fraud to watch Hail to the Chimp in a drive-in theater. It’s pretty much exactly how it sounds: a
monkey is now the president -- no context needed for that, natch -- and
apparently by the climax the monkey president has to dive out of a plane while
wearing a parachute. And a suit. The president has to look good, after all.

I can’t help but think
back to that when it
comes to Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. “Apes with machine guns” is, for me, the
closest thing to a deal-breaker you can imagine. You can’t have something like that unless you
play it as a farce,
and certainly can’t work that into a serious story and expect to keep a
straight face. So when I hear that the
very same thing is in this latest movie, my hype meter pretty much hit the
floor.

Imagine my surprise,
then, when I find out for myself that the movie is irresponsibly
fantastic. That probably has something
to do with the movie keeping the simian gunslingers to a minimum…but you didn’t
hear that from me.

GET READY FOR THE NEXT SPOILERS.

Ha. Bet
you thought this spoiler warning would have something to do with apes, didn’t
you? Well, too bad. Tekken
7’s been officially announced, so look forward to that Death Fist goodness.

July 10, 2014

I’d like to think that
I’ve got a pretty good handle on the gaming canon, but there many, many, many
titles that are lost on me. And it’s not
just titles, either; there’s a pretty strong argument to be made that I’ve got
no experience in entire genres. Case in point: shmups. I think that the first one I ever really
played was Ikaruga…the one on the
Xbox 360. I suppose in a sense
you could say that Sin and Punishment:
Star Successor counts, but that just came out a couple of years ago. It really says a lot about me when the first
time I see notable shmups like Gradius is
through an episode of Game Grumps.

So on the subject of Resogun, I can’t say that I had any
extreme interest in it. I don’t have any
attachment to shmups, so it’s only natural that I don’t go out of my way to
play one for myself. Little wonder,
then, that a copy of it has been sitting inside my PS4, largely untouched by me
and my brother. But a couple of weeks
back, I gave it a shot.

July 7, 2014

I really don’t want to
talk about it for very long, much less see it.
If you’ve poked around this blog before, then you may be aware that one
viewing of Dark of the Moonpretty much shaved thirty years off my
life. I’m not in the mood to lose any
more, whether it’s by way of seeing Age
of Extinction on TV years after release, or by plopping down in a theater
to subject myself to the torture. In all
fairness, though, I’ve heard from a few people -- MovieBob, surprisingly --
that the latest is the best yet. That’s
not saying much, and even his review seemed to make the praise relative to
complaints, but I guess it’s something.

The Tuesday after
MovieBob’s review, a
video went up where he suggested that we need to (as per the title) “Leave
Michael Bay Alone”. That’s…actually
pretty fair. He’s a person who’s very
easy to rage at, obviously, but setting aside the fact that he didn’t make the Transformers movies alone -- let alone
turn them into a runaway hit -- hating what he’s put out and hating the man itself
skirts a very thin line. And people just
might play double-dutch with that line thanks to the fodder provided by the
trilogy. Er…quadrilogy.

But talking about Bay
and the Transformers movies is as
good a point to start as any. See,
there’s something I think might be worth talking about -- which you might have
guessed if you read the title. If you
didn’t, then don’t go back and read it.
You’ll spoil the surprise.

July 3, 2014

You know, I seem to
recall me saying once upon a time that I was going to stop celebrating these
“milestones” so blatantly. The number of
posts -- and by extension, the number of anniversaries -- doesn’t matter too much
in the long run. I’d prefer to measure
success and value in terms of quality.
But I can’t judge that for myself.
That’s going to come from the people who read this blog, AKA the way it
should be.

So I want to start this
post by thanking those that are reading, whether you’ve been drawn in for the
first time by the prospect of a milestone, or you’re a long-time reader. I know I’m not the most popular blogger on
the internet (and certainly not the smartest or best), but just knowing that I
can make one person happy with what I write here means the world to me.

But I’m still not
satisfied. I want to do more. Offer more.
Excite more. Be more. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.